Thursday March snuck up on us fast! It was time to leave for Alaska and start our adventure north. I couldn’t wait to see the mountains and beautiful scenery. We started the day by taking a coach bus down to MSP. Then, we flew 4 hours to Seattle and then almost 4 more hours to Anchorage. It was a long day of sitting on planes and hurrying up and waiting. We finally made it to Anchorage about 11:30 pm and to the house we were staying in around 1 am, exhausted but excited to see what Alaska really looked like in the daylight, so we all headed to bed. The next day we were going to the Alaska Native Heritage Center to learn about the different Alaskan Native cultures. Friday Up and at ‘em nice and early to head over to the Heritage Center for the cultural workshop and broaden our horizons. We watched a few videos about the many Alaskan Native cultures and characteristics about each one. We met with a lady from the Heritage Center, named Yaari, who further explained about the Native people and their ways. She was a healer, which meant she had visions and was able to travel to the spiritual world. Yaari even used her healing powers to take out the negative energy from one of our professors, who had a bad head cold. It seemed to even work! She also makes her own salve, made out of a plant and olive oil, which is good for skin issues, muscle aches, and other uses. She gave us a tour of some model Native housing from some of the different tribes. There were artifacts in each one, such as baleen, drums, masks, totem poles, and animal hides. It was interesting and eye-opening to learn about how they were (and still are) able to live off the land. She described bow-headed whale hunts, which are amazing accomplishments for their people. She also illustrated how she would skin polar bears if one had come into a village and the many uses for seal oil. At the end of the day, we came back to the house, which is a huge home with a beautiful view of Anchorage and the mountains on the horizon. We saw a moose and her baby on the way back from the Heritage Center, which was exciting! We had halibut and salmon for dinner, as well as some samples of Alaskan craft beer. Saturday and Sunday are excursion days! |